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In less than a year as Australian government leader, Prime Minister Tony Abbott has drawn more ire from environmentalists than most anti-regulation crusaders manage in a full term in office. He delivered last month on his chief campaign promise to make the land Down Under the first to repeal a functioning carbon tax on the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases. His government has also approved the massive Carmichael Coal Mine development in Queensland that environmentalists say threatens to damage the Great Barrier Reef with its runoff and to blast the atmosphere with an additional 130 million tons of carbon dioxide each year. He invited loggers to Parliament House in Canberra in...

Related "National Government" Articles

In less than a year as Australian government leader, Prime Minister Tony Abbott has drawn more ire from environmentalists than most anti-regulation crusaders manage in a full term in office.
He delivered last month on his chief campaign promise to make...

European Union officials said Wednesday they had launched an investigation into whether Ireland and two other member nations were providing improper tax breaks to Apple Inc., Starbucks Corp. and Fiat Group.
The announcement came as the U.S. and other...

Call it the "skin-in-the-game" argument: the notion that people will use medical care more sparingly -- and presumably more prudently -- if they have to pay a larger share of the costs out of their own pockets.
This is the idea behind...

The president of the OpenSSL Foundation said the organization needs more support from companies and governments that use its software so that it can be better equipped to spot and fix flawed pieces of code such as the Heartbleed bug.
The OpenSSL...

Landon Donovan likes the U.S.'s chances in World Cup group play against Ghana, Portugal and Germany. But the threat posed by Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo is something that could keep him up at night.
"Listen, there's no question he's one of the...

With a convulsive rumble, followed by billowing flames and exhaust, a sleek 60-foot rocket emerged from its silo at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base.
It was a test of the backbone of the nation's missile defense system. If North Korea or Iran...

Israel on Wednesday was pursuing a two-fold mission in the West Bank: Find three Israeli teenagers presumed to have been kidnapped last week and crack down on the Palestinian militant organization Hamas.
The three yeshiva students -- Gilad Shaar and...

Everything about Pope John Paul II was larger than life: his constant globetrotting, his naming of 483 saints -- more than all his predecessors combined -- and his 27 years in office, making him one of the longest serving pontiffs.
The Polish pope even...

At a time when the Middle East peace process appears stymied, Israel received an unexpected olive branch when Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas denounced the Holocaust and expressed sympathy with its victims.
“What happened to the Jews in the...

At a time when the Middle East peace process appears stymied, Israel received an unexpected olive branch when Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas denounced the Holocaust and expressed sympathy with its victims.
But Israeli Prime Minister...

Syrian President Bashar Assad said Monday he would seek reelection in balloting scheduled for June, the government announced, confirming a decision that had been widely expected.
Official state media reported that Syrians “took out to the streets” across...

As pro-Russia separatists clubbed their way into another regional government headquarters in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday, a top official of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe appealed for restoration of the "rule of...

The chairman of a key Senate panel Tuesday blocked $650 million in military aid for Egypt in a sign of Washington’s ambivalence over support for the authoritarian military government in Cairo.
Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate...

The European Union added 15 names to its list of those sanctioned in response to worsening violence in Ukraine, where separatists clubbed their way into control of another regional government headquarters Tuesday.
The EU blacklist, enacted more than a...

Schools, businesses and services were shuttered Wednesday in Fureidis the day after the Arab town became the latest community in Israel to be vandalized in a rash of hate crimes.
Worshipers arriving at a mosque early Tuesday found its outer walls...

Acting Ukrainian President Oleksandr Turchynov conceded Wednesday that police have lost control of the eastern towns and cities occupied by pro-Russia gunmen and ordered a full military alert to prevent the separatist disruptions from spreading.
...

The most important battle in politics today is the one within the Republican Party, and the tea party movement didn't start it. The GOP's civil war began in 1912 when Teddy Roosevelt made progressivism the governing philosophy of the Republican...

Re "Obama's foreign policy goals founder," April 26
It never ceases to amaze me how President Obama is held responsible for events he did not cause and over which he has no control.
He apparently is expected to force Russia to retreat on...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday to urge him to use his influence with pro-Russia militants holding seven European military observers hostage in eastern Ukraine, official sources in Berlin and Moscow...

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani voiced support for increased workers’ rights in a May Day speech Thursday at a packed basketball stadium, but opposition websites reported that 20 workers were detained while en route to a separate labor rally.
“Workers...